The wildness of things
“I’ve always been more drawn to the poems that praise the strangeness of animals rather than the beauty of them.”
Dear friends,
Hallo to you. This week, I’ve gone from Calgary to Kingston, then north, then to Chicago, and now I am at a retreat centre a little outside Colorado Springs.
This morning, looking out the window, there was a deer walking over the lightly snow-dusted ground. It was looking for food, nibbling here and there: the ground, the bark, plants, leaves from small shrubs. There were a few small birds flying around, one variety of crow with a peak on its head that I didn’t recognise. There was very little sound, just the sound of the countryside. Not quiet exactly, but not noisy. The sound of trees.
Whenever I see a deer, I can feel transported to a nature poem. Yes, yes. I love deer in nature poems. But I am also aware that deer are creatures: wild, skittish, unsentimental at times, permanently alert to danger, muscular — those hind legs. Their shape leans them into the speed they employ to escape their predators.
As long as I’ve been reading poetry about animals — and it’s a long time — I’ve always been more drawn to the poems that praise the strangeness of animals rather than the beauty of them. Their beauty is evident. Their wildness is, too: their smells, their tactics, the blood on their teeth, their parenting habits, their mating habits, their timetable.
Gail McConnell has a poem, “Worm,” that we’ve covered in Poetry Unbound — an episode on the podcast, and the subject of an essay in the book. What I love about that poem is how much of a close scientific looking it is: she looks at the worm, not through it. She sees its tubular shape, the lube it secretes and uses to move, the functions of its excrement. A bond is created between the poet and the worm — she addresses it as you throughout — but this bond avoids ease or sentimentality.
In the Poetry Unbound book, there are also essays about poems from Vahni Anthony Capildeo and Paul Tran, both of whom examine animals in their wildness: Vahni Anthony’s poem considers a massive bull, shitting on a public road while being led from one enclosure to another, and then brings that image into conversation about men at an elite institution. Paul Tran’s poem looks at creatures of the deep, in their hideousness. It is the wildness, the strangeness, the ways in which these creatures turn away from us and seem to resist projection that is at the heart of these poems.
All of this reminds me of the Irish word for heather. Heather, that gorgeous, sometimes multi-coloured (green, purple, yellow, pink) shrubby bush is all over some parts of Ireland. It’s consoling for the eye. But I’d not want to be a farmer or an animal trying to grow or graze where the land is covered in heather. The Irish word for it is fraoch — which shares etymological roots with rage. The word for it resists the idea that the beauty of its foliage is the only thing about it. When I see valleys of heather now, I have more than one association and question.
I am curious to hear if there are creatures — or poems about creatures — that move you, not because of sentimentality, or because the beast is being used as a vehicle for tenderness, but more so because of the wildness espoused, the not-human nature that you encounter.
I love these conversations that happen in the comments: you share so much of your life, your reading, your perspective. People comment on people’s comments, and make it a dialogue. If you’re used to this, or if you’re new, you’re welcome. Browse through the comments with me this week, whether you just read, or whether you write.
I’ll look forward to seeing you in the wildness.
Pádraig
Coming up next week …
On Thursday, Nov. 17th, I’ll be giving an evening lecture at Keble College (Pusey Room) in Oxford, England. Find more information here. No registration required, just turn up ahead of 6pm. It’d be lovely to see you.
My sister died from pancreatic cancer to this poem. ❤️
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
A few years ago I was walking along the rugged rocks by the sea at Hånke in Norway at dusk, just as shadow was descending on the land and I was startled by a gathering of deer who started leaping around me and each other in the darkness, a mysterious ritual. This poem came of it years later
SICUT CERVUS
Give me rain to hide my thirst
hope to give it shelter.
Let me run to the rocks on the water
where junipers meet the sky at dusk.
There I will find my friends,
shadows all,
and hop and prance
until darkness twists us into bone.
Antlers, limbs, and hooves
scratch the starry sky
beckoning a generous moon
to restore our inner radiance.
It turns the wind
and calls the sea to touch us.
I rise, parched and golden
stepping on kelp and broken urchins
until
deep calls to deep:
roaring waves sweep over me,
and I am new.